


Dance Me to Your Beauty

by Oshun



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: Canon Het Relationship, F/M, Het and Slash, M/M, Male Slash, Multi, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 08:29:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8883880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oshun/pseuds/Oshun
Summary: Dance me to your beauty with a burning violinDance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely inLift me like an olive branch and be my homeward doveDance me to the end of love.–Leonard Cohen, Dance Me to the End of Love





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [plalligator](https://archiveofourown.org/users/plalligator/gifts).



> I want to thank you with all my heart for giving me the chance to write this story. I love these characters and enjoyed spending so much time thinking about them. Your request felt like a hand-in-glove fit.
> 
> Now, this is where I ask you to accept my apologies for changing to Irene’s POV for one segment only. I know some people do not like surprises—especially POV changes—and I hate to mention this (for artistic reasons), but I do not want to ruin anyone’s Yuletide by confusing them! Bear with me and listen to Irene for that short section. (I loved her voice and could not bear to cut it and I know you like her too.)

  
  _Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin_  
_Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in_  
_Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove_  
_Dance me to the end of love_.  –Leonard Cohen, _Dance Me to the End of Love_  
  
“Up here, Costis!” called the king, leaning over the parapet. “Come talk to me.”  
  
Once again Costis had encountered Eugenides alone, leaping from battlement to balcony on his way from his rooms to those of the queen. Where were the king’s attendants? Ever since the political situation in the court had settled, for the moment at least, the king had fallen back into his old habits of slipping away from his retinue whenever he was able. If he interrogated him, the king would doubtless insist he was simply keeping his skills of stealth and acrobatics well-honed. Costis, his devoted companion and personal bodyguard, had just returned from a week off to visit his family in the countryside.  Immediately, after dropping his bags and taking a quick bath, he had set off in search of his king. He did not trust anyone to look after him properly and had just been proven right!  
  
Stubborn and fairly certain no one could hear him, Costis shouted back. “I am _not_ risking my neck by climbing up there, sire. You’ll have to come down to me this time.”  
  
Eugenides crossed his arms over his chest and smirked, waiting. “The queen would like to welcome you home. She has something to discuss with you.” Costis couldn’t think of anything he might have done wrong.  
  
How stupid Costis felt for allowing himself to become so smitten with this man. It was bad enough that he had already fallen in love with the queen. But to permit his feelings to burst all bounds of rationality to the extent that now he adored them both was the stuff of insanity. He hoped he could handle it. If no one had ever guessed he loved Attolia, they were unlikely to figure out that he had a crush on her outrageous husband as well.  
  
Costis, afraid to look the queen in the face, had spent his first years in the palace watching her out of the corner of his eye. From a distance or a three-quarters view she looked too beautiful to be genuine. Up close she was shockingly real, warm and fresh-smelling, a lovely young woman stretched to her limit, but never floundering, determined instead and courageous. Her skin looked all but poreless from a few inches of distance. Yet, he missed no slight tightening of her lips in irritation or quaver of uncertainty. He noticed her every soft inhalation or straightening of her shoulders whenever a courtly function ran on too long. The times he had detected faint lavender circles under her eyes, he obsessively wondered what prevented her from resting well.  
  
To tell the truth, he had loved the queen before he ever met her. The tales of her beauty and audacity that spread from the capital and into the provinces would have inspired any youth leaving his rustic home behind to serve in the Palace Guard. When he was promoted to the Queen’s Guard, he was proud. But, although his transfer to the company of new King’s Guard, after the royal wedding, had technically been a promotion it was still a disappointment.  
  
His infatuation with their new king, the former Thief of Eddis, came upon him more slowly. He loathed him before he learned to respect him and then finally came to love him. Costis, like most of the palace guards, was infuriated when he heard that their queen, pressured by politicians and diplomats, had agreed to marry a young noble of neighboring Eddis—and not just any callow youth—but the devious Eugenides. The lad was more than a little disreputable. Although of royal blood, a number of the fellow's kinsmen were closer than him to the Eddisian throne, which rested securely in the hands of his cousin the Queen of Eddis. Costis had smoldered with resentment, hating the skinny bridegroom—a real idiot from what he initially observed—who had been forced upon their valiant queen.  
  
Attolia Irene had been forced to sacrifice her personal sovereignty in this marriage to a fool of a boy in order to avoid an extended war which neither realm would win but that could cost both countries a generation of young men.  
  
Now, Costis could barely believe how he day-dreamed about kissing Eugenides’ red lips, of capturing the pink tip of his tongue in the middle of one of those saucy comments or careless laughs. He wanted to trace the scar on the king’s cheek, imagining how warm his skin would feel. His sleeping dreams were worse, causing him to awaken sweaty and hard, with the imagined taste of Eugenides on his lips.  
  
But, at that exact moment in time, Costis wanted only to squeeze his eyes shut as the king leaped across yet one more impossible distance, grinning like a fool, teetering on one leg and wind-milling his arms for the simple pleasure of frightening him almost to point of pissing himself. Costis tried not watch.  
  
He looked down into the courtyard to distract himself. It must be mid-afternoon already. The crowd hurrying to and fro below had thinned from the usual after-lunch bustle of people off to the scriptorium or archives, the kitchen, guardhouse, or workshops to begin their afternoon’s work, to the occasional bureaucrat or servant hurrying off on an errand.  
  
Eugenides finally landed light as cat in front of Costis, executing a graceful if unkingly obeisance. Costis shook his head at him. He had complained countless times that kings did not bow to their lieutenants, even tongue-in-cheek. Of course, this king did it to annoy—to irritate Costis or provoke status-sensitive courtiers. When he did it in private, it made the queen laugh.  
  
“Cat got your tongue, Costis?”  
  
Costis belatedly remembered to close his mouth. Whatever it was the queen wanted to say to him could not be that terrible. He thought he detected the faint scent of wine.  
  
“Have you been drinking, Your Majesty? Surely not so early in the day?”  
  
“I see. You are not going to give me a kiss hello? Your tone of voice reminds me of how my dear old great-auntie Froso spoke to me in my nursery days.” He sighed and shrugged. “I consumed a little more wine with our midday meal than I had intended to, but who’s counting, besides you and maybe Irene. The effects are wearing off already. I have been bored out of my mind without you. It’s been difficult not having your peculiar mug to inspect in court this week. I love staring at your face, you know. All right. I’ll admit you’re easy on the eyes, but no less entertaining. It’s your comic expressions that endear you to me. And our beloved queen has been grumpy and officious in your absence also. Alas, poor girl! I think she really did miss you. If we had a choice, neither one of us would give you any liberty at all.”  
  
Costis blushed a fiery red. “I doubt the queen even notices whether I am in the Audience Hall or not,” he grumbled.  
  
“Wrong again! Why just the other evening as we were drifting off to sleep, she said, ‘I’ve missed seeing our favorite lieutenant.’” Eugenides winked at him, grinning. “We both enjoy your expressions—the long-suffering sighs and the eye-rolling, especially as the morning session in court wears on.”  
  
“I thought I guarded my demeanor well in public.” Costis sniffed and Eugenides snorted at him, before they laughed as one. It was becoming a mutual joke amongst the three of them that Costis was as transparent as Eugenides was deliberately opaque.  
  
“Ha! You thought wrong!” the king cackled. His quicksilver smile turned from wicked to sweet and generous in an instant. “You’re so obvious, darling.”  
  
The use of endearments recently had become another way of torturing Costis. “I suppose I’m not a good liar like you.”  
  
“Sadly, no. You are not.” Eugenides did not try to hold back a guffaw. “One of your greatest virtues and the most dangerous of your flaws as well. Let’s go find Irene. I promised her I would track you down.”

  
  
o0o0o0o  
  
When they arrived at the queen’s apartment, Eugenides asked him to wait outside of the door which led into her bedroom. He didn’t mind. He loved listening to them talk when one or both of them were unaware that he could hear them. He liked the private voices they used with one another, not always revealed even when they were alone with only him. Despite Eugenides’ pretense of guarding nothing from anyone and the queen’s exterior which projected that she maintained the same royal reserve in private as in public, they each had distinct private voices. Irene’s was colored by an understated humor and a gentle warmth for her husband. Eugenides’ unguarded tone, still mildly self-deprecatory, was softer, sadder, and undeniably tender with the queen.  
  
Costis could not hear a thing. He inched closer to the bedroom until he could hear their voices. He strained until he could decipher words out of the muffled sounds which reached from behind the heavy door.  
  
“Do you love our Costis, sweetheart, because he is the strong, steady type?” the king asked. Costis might have felt uncomfortable with the characterization—it made him sound so dull—except for the context. It mystified him. He had no idea what they were talking about.  
  
“That is part of his appeal,” The queen said, a smile in her voice. “Does that worry you? It shouldn’t. I very much like that I know I can depend on him. But I adore your unreliability. You rile me up, while he calms me down. Actually, a lovely balance.”  
  
“Hmm. Or could be some strange form of two negatives, or is it positives, slotting together to . . . Oh, never mind. . . Thank you, anyway. It always makes me feel a lot better when you admit that you like me even with my faults. Not that I could ever change, even for you, much as I might like to!”  
  
“You indulge yourself!” she said, laughing.  
  
“Fine. Then I will bring him in. You decide what you want to do. I expect you to do the talking. I’ll support whatever you choose.”  
  
“I want you to be happy.”  
  
“And I want you to be pleased. Don’t be afraid to indulge yourself, sweetheart. I know you have it in you!”  
  
“You, wicked, cheeky boy!”  
  
Costis jumped back quickly and silently enough to be neither detected nor hit in the nose when Eugenides swung the door open.  
  
As always, the queen was stunning in her beauty. She wore a simply cut sea-foam green chiton which appeared to made of cotton or linen but woven as finely as the most delicate silk. It was cinched at the waist with a girdle of braided gold cord. The simplicity of her attire in contrast to the regality of her usual court dresses enhanced her beauty to a breathtaking degree. Literally, Costis thought he could barely catch his breath. His infatuation with these two was going to kill him or, worse still perhaps, get him killed.  
  
“Costis,” she said, holding out her hand for him to kiss it. He barely touched the soft skin of the back of her hand with his lips, afraid to kiss it and betray his desire somehow. “Tell me, how did you find the House of Ormentiedes?”  
  
“As well as can be expected, my queen. My cousins are as annoying as ever and my father works too hard. He does say that we can expect an olive harvest that’s better by far than any in recent years. Thank you for asking.”  
  
“And was it hard to return to us?” His cheeks burned in mortification at the thought of how much he had missed them and how little interest he had taken in the concerns of the Gede Valley and his kinsmen. A fool in love, he thought, and what a hopeless, desperate love. Perhaps he would outgrow it in time to save himself.  
  
“I longed to return,” he said, surprising himself. Eugenides grinned at his wife and raised his eyebrows, as though to say, ‘I told you so.’  
  
“Look, we have refreshments.” She motioned in the direction of the small table in front of the window, where they had on numerous occasions in the past shared bread, wine, cheese, and olives having missed regular meals, due to duties of governance or diplomacy. “I was not sure that you would have had a proper midday meal. Gen certainly did not. He was unbearably fidgety waiting for you and drank too much.”  
  
Costis was back on familiar ground here. “Yes, my queen, I found him running across rooftops and jumping from one parapet to another . . .”  
  
“Excuse me? I found you! So cruel. Do you actually want to get me into trouble with her?”  
  
“You scare me! Who's in trouble if you fall to your death?”  
  
“Gentlemen! Please. I want to talk to Costis. But first, both of you sit down with me and serve yourselves some food. Would you like a glass of wine, Costis?” He nodded affirmatively and she filled his wine from the carafe on the table—heady treatment being served by his beautiful queen. “And, you my darling husband, water or perhaps I could order you some tea or fruit juice from the kitchens?”  
  
“Watered wine will do.” He winked at her and she smiled. “I love you more than life itself, Irene.”  
  
“Well, you do not appear to love life very much!”  
  
The wine always tasted sweeter, the cheese creamier, the olives more delicious, and the bread fresher, when his monarchs shared it with him, despite coming from the same kitchen. He thought there must be a simple explanation for that and laughed. Eugenides and Irene looked at one another and smiled as though appreciating a beloved child. He could not help himself. He was happy when he was with them.  
  
“Costis,” Irene began. “We’ve discussed you a great deal while you were away. Your presence in our lives is a disturbing one. There are discordant elements in the relationship as it stands. I’ve told Gen that I believe the resolution is simple.  
  
He felt his mouth drop open like a witless fool. By all the gods of Eddis and Attolia, she intended to sack him! “Your majesty?” he asked, choking on the words, dropping his bread and cheese onto his plate, and beginning to push his chair away from the table.  
  
“Shh! Costis! Do not for a moment think we would ask anything of you that you did not want, nothing against your will. Be truthful with us and we will go from there. I know you love my husband. Do you desire him? I mean, physically. Do you find me attractive at all?” She reached for his hand and took it in her own and squeezed. Her hand was cold and her lower lip trembling.  
  
“Oh, Irene!” Eugenides said. “You really are not very good at this, for someone who has been married twice and a queen for several years! You are scaring him to death. Just kiss him or if you are afraid to, I will. Costis?” The king looked at him and swallowed hard. “May I kiss you, please?” he asked, uncharacteristically self-conscious.  
  
They were propositioning him. And they were both terrible at it. He could have done a better job himself. “I love you both. I want you both. I have wanted you for months!”  
  
o0o0o0o  
  
**Ten Days Later**  
  
“Come with me, my pretty queen. Follow me. I promise I will not let you fall.”  
  
Eugenides held his hand out to her, with a mordant smile. She wanted to refuse him, but being at least as stubborn as he was, she would not back down. “Fine,” she said, shaking her head with exasperation, but smiling despite herself. “If you kill us, I will never forgive you.”  
  
“Don’t worry. I won’t! This is just the opposite. This is going to make us stronger. I can feel my god and he is smiling at you. I know you can feel him too. Don’t you?” Gen grinned like a little boy and she felt a joy as sharp as to be indistinguishable from pain. He was good at that!  
  
He led them out of the tower; there they climbed up a tiny, narrow set of steps onto the battlements. Eugenides, the infuriating Eddisian goat-footed charmer, blessed by his god of thieves, scurried on ahead of her as unafraid and carefree as a child until he reached the broadest part of the stone wall. She followed him, one cautious step after another, not as terrified as she had been the first time she had done this but far from comfortable and as angry as seven devils. He turned from time to time to smirk at her and execute a back flip or flail his arms pretending to be losing his balance. She hated heights; she hated his reckless tomfoolery, but she was determined to learn to trust him, to trust his god, and accept his awesome gifts, because that would be their only hope.  
  
Finally he stopped and turned a loving face upon her, holding out his hand. They stood upon a balcony facing the west. One could almost imagine one saw the mountains of Eddis—Eugenides liked to squint his eyes in that direction as though, if he tried hard enough, he could see his rugged homeland. Irene could gaze out over the interior courtyard, the garden, and the park. And, and beyond all that, all of fair Attolia spread out before them. A drifting cloud suddenly exposed the full glory of the brilliant midday sun. The sight caused her to gasp in wonderment. This was more securely hers—theirs actually—than she had ever hoped or imagined it would be when she took over her birthright.  
  
“Now tell me if you can, sweetheart,” Eugenides said in a soft drawl, “that it was not worth it to trust me!”  
  
At that moment Irene heard a cough and turned to see Costis leaning against the interior wall—rakish and more at ease now. His new confidence was exciting in a way she had never imagined it might be. He was no longer reticent or wary, but still as reliable as the sun. He was handsome, as strong and solid as Eugenides was mercurial and slight. And together they gave her more than she had ever dreamed of finding.  
  
“How did you get here?” Eugenides asked, greeting Costis with a wide smile.  
  
Costis laughed. “The way any ordinary person would. I opened the first door onto the staircase on the fourth floor of the west wing, walked up one flight of stairs, to the end of hall, and passed onto the balcony through that wide open doorway behind me.”  
  
“Well, a dozen people probably observed you,” the king said. “You would not make a good spy and certainly not a thief.”  
  
“I know I would not, but we have you for that, don’t we? Actually, I did not pass a single person. Not that I was hiding from anyone.” Costis could not hold back a laugh and, without looking around him to see if they were being observed, he leaned forward and lightly kissed Eugenides on the mouth.  
  
“Ah, I see,” Eugenides said, pulling away, his heart in his eyes. “I love you. Give Irene a kiss too so she will not pout. I hate it when she pouts.”  
  
Irene giggled and covered her mouth. It was strange to feel so young and giddy.  
  
o0o0o0o  
  
The murmur of cultivated voices of the court hushed instantly as the Queen and King of Attolia entered the royal audience chamber. Over the past several months, Costis had learned the hard way that the king was far better educated and immeasurably cleverer than the most learned of these peacocks. As though he could read his thoughts, Eugenides caught his eye and winked at him.  
  
The queen’s beauty was of the type of which one became instantly aware. It caught one’s heart and squeezed it at first sight and the feeling never grew stale. Her hair, thick and glossy black, piled high and topped with a coronet of gem-encrusted golden foliage, called attention to her above average height. Her stately tread, straight spine and the swanlike grace of her neck gave her the poise of a dancer and the demeanor of a goddess. She was a young woman of dignity and grave self-possession. And yet she was playful and demanding in bed.  
  
Eugenides, projecting no godlike characteristics, on the other hand, and Costis knew this for a fact because he had witnessed it, was in regular communication with the gods of his native land. Costis had heard a god speak to him. The young king, dark-skinned, thin and withy, and, although he was still growing, was notably shorter than his wife. He looked foreign, with his tightly curled dark hair and compact body, in a world where the standard of male beauty was marked by blondness and a strong, tall, and broad-shouldered warrior’s build. Well, if not blond, then, at very least, one considered to be a handsome Attolian would be blessed with skin of a natural fairness similar to that of the queen. Those who spent much of their time out of doors, like Costis himself, tanned a golden brown after years on horseback and in the sparring ring. But Eugenides, who was naturally dark complexioned, had a shade of skin which took on an intense walnut-brown color with regular exposure to the sun. Conversely, when deprived of sunlight, he faded to a somewhat sallow olive tint. The climate of the mountainous region of Eddis might have been cooler, but its exposure to the sun was more intense and its natives needed it to look their best.  
  
Although he was not preoccupied with his own looks, Costis was aware that his own appearance was much was closer to the Attolian ideal than the king’s could ever be. And, although Eugenides might have gained a bit on his wife over the course of the last few months, he would never be a large or tall man.  
  
When Costis had first seen Eugenides he, in his ignorance bred of rural isolation, had been repelled at the thought of their beautiful queen being wed to a shorter than average Eddisian, with their typical olive-skin and almond eyes, and his heavy mop of unruly curls. But even in those early days, the king’s beautiful body revealed an attention-grabbing balance of the lithe and powerful. His appearance had never failed to stir Costis since he had first seen him unclad. However, it was the king’s formidable intelligence, his courage, his quick-wittedness, and the warmth and generosity that he always tried to hide, which had first combined to win Costis’ heart. Physical attraction closely followed.  
  
In life, there are families into which one is born and families which one chooses. One tends to love one’s parents and siblings whether one shares any tastes or empathy with them at all. Unless, of course, they have been vicious or cruel enough to destroy the innocent love of a child and then the hatred one holds for them may be comparable to none other. Familiarity can also be stifling or may breed boredom and a desire to break away. Costis had been born into a loving family. He was cared for and accepted. The love he received was unquestioned and equal to the affection given his sister, neither less nor more. He and his sister loved one another and Costis was a dutiful son and his father was proud of him.  
  
As the only son of a younger son of a family of minor landed gentry, Costis had different pressures than the heir of a larger estate. His father had received a small holding of his own from his mother’s family, but not enough to provide for his old age and establish their children in the world in much comfort. So, Costis, competent and not lacking in intelligence, was sent off to the capital to train as part of the Royal Guard. And here he was daydreaming in court standing at the side of his sovereign highnesses and lovers, wishing only that this session would end and they could return to queen’s chambers. Eugenides looked distracted and fidgety and Irene was frankly worried. Life had been kinder as a whole to Costis than it had been to his beloveds and it was his duty to solace, calm, and comfort them.  
  
Hours later in Irene’s solar, they waited together for Gen. He had slipped away from them somehow between court and the queen’s apartments.  
  
She was explaining how the physicians she had consulted were concerned for the king’s health. “I explained to them . . . . It was mortifying. Damn you! Stop smirking. I wish you could have been there. . . . . how he has no lack of sexual energy. But they say he should rest more and eat better. At least he does not generally drink too much. Except when he does! I think you know that he communicates directly with gods. I do not understand yet to what degree he is a demigod himself. The gods are arrogant in ways in which Gen is not. He is arrogant about his sleight of hand, about his ability to dream up clever schemes. He is even quite vain about his erudition. He is aware of his nerve, but not arrogant about it. I never know when he is lying or telling the truth when he calls himself a physical coward.”  
  
She looked up at Costis, her chin trembling almost imperceptibly. “Of course I wonder how much of this I caused myself.” Tears sprang into her eyes and flowed copiously down her cheeks.  
  
Costis reached out and took both of her hands. He was afraid to try to take her into his arms, because he worried she would not allow herself the comfort.  
  
“He begged me not to hurt him. He was barely more than a child then.”  
  
“Stop it, Irene. He’d been doing years of a man’s work for his country by then. His cousin let him come. Although he says he made the decision.”  
  
Irene looked up at Costis, seeming to curl in upon herself, with a sudden choking sob. “If only I could undo that one decision of mine!”  
  
Costis fell to his knees before her. He had to touch her. He pressed his head into her lap, holding her narrow waist with both hands. “Don’t, please don’t wish that; don’t anger the gods! Where would you and I be now if you had not done it. Then none of the events his actions and yours set in motion would have resulted in him becoming your husband and the king that brought our countries peace. Sometimes terrible acts result in a greater good. He knew his risks and understood how you saw your duty and despite that he challenged you to act.”  
  
“He did not think I was clever enough to catch him.”  
  
“That was his mistake not yours!”  
  
There was a sound behind them. They both looked toward the open window. The noise had been deliberate. Eugenides stood with his back to the balcony, eyes large and cheeks unnaturally pink.  
  
“I experience at times what I have thought might be delusions, that, whenever I am not around, the two of you are very busy talking about me—commiserating even. I try to convince myself that I am, as Irene often says, too full of myself. But evidence is that perhaps you actually are obsessed with me.”  
  
“Gen, you silly fool,” said Irene, laughing away her tears and sniffing. “Costis, find me a handkerchief, please!”  
  
“She’s very bossy,” Costis said, smiling at Gen, his heart lifting.  
  
Despite his charming smile, Eugenides looked terrible—haggard and ill—but Costis could not restrain a chuckle at the sudden sight of him. His king and love had that effect upon people. The queen harrumphed at her spouse. For all of her enthralling beauty, she sounded like a grumpy old fishwife.  
  
“I was thinking,” Gen said. “My god has never asked of me a single heartbreaking sacrifice, like in all the wonder tales of gods and heroes. That might have been easier.” He held up his stump, naked of hook or wooden hand, and looked it with large sorrowful eyes as though it were something mysterious and apart from himself that he had never noticed or studied before. “Instead, my cruel god laughs at me and asks not for a day, some weeks, or months, or even years, but all of my life entire. Yet I am happy tonight. Let’s not be melodramatic.”  
  
“Well, you look completely miserable,” Irene snapped, annoyed. “You have black circles under your eyes. You need a bath and a shave! You need to eat! You need a good night’s sleep!”  
  
Suddenly, Costis understood something and he could not control the wide smile he felt pulling unexpected at his face. He stood up and walked to Eugenides. “You need a strong drink and a good fuck!” he said. Eugenides had reached his utter depths and cried out to his god and for once the god had answered him directly and not with incomprehensible or unwanted pronouncement.  
  
The king pretended to ignore him, but looking straight into the queen’s eyes, confirmed what Costis had said.  
  
 “I was tired, in pain, and hungry. I stood upon the crenellations looking down onto the practice yard. I had no shirt and no shoes. And I wondered if my god would save me. There would be nothing to hide his grace if he did.  I had no hook. In any case, I had stopped where there was nothing to catch it on—just one sheer drop straight down. But I felt compelled to test, not that I haven’t done so before, but never so blatantly. I did not want to die, but I leapt and he carried me.” He coughed and released a hoarse laugh. “I floated like a kite!” His haunted look disappeared, leaving him looking young and vulnerable, but no longer anguished.  
  
“Gen, you know how I hate it when you tell these awful stories . . . .” Irene began, with a shiver, her eyes flashing with anger. He interrupted her.  
  
“Well, too late to complain now. You knew what I was like—grandiose, greedy, and histrionic—before you agreed to accept me! Yet, it never makes any difference. Oh, I can do better for a while and then I get tired, or overly self-confident, and I start to make mistakes. Irene, listen. . . . this time everything was different. My god answered me. He said, ‘I have given you time enough to love the two who love you. Do it.’”  



End file.
